The file, p.8
The File, page 8
“Lady. You go fast. You get away. Tell my baby, tell my wife, tell them I love them…. Go fast now, lady. God bless you.”
“God bless you, Jackson.” Her voice was hardly a whisper.
And then she was gone, slipping silently into the jungle, wiping away her tears as she went.
The last vision that she had of Jackson was of him curled up behind the huge grey engine, blood dripping off his hand as he sighted his old hunting rifle through the jungle. His face was set like her father’s had been, the last time she saw him. A hard, cold gaze, tinged with resignation, in contrast to her father’s defiance. But the same grim determination as he waited for the soldiers to arrive.
She turned then and followed the trail, the way he had taken them before, knowing it would lead her up the ridge, then down to the next watercourse, and onto the trail they had hiked last month. She couldn’t bring herself to think about the last half hour. She could only do what Jackson told her — run, run fast and far, as fast and far as she could.
Chapter 11
Reginald Reid
He looked out of the helicopter, over what was left of the camp, then swore again. The weather had turned against them early in the morning, two hours before the sun rose. As they flew south, the clouds thickened. When they landed to refuel at another nameless airstrip, this one in central Uganda, the rains had already begun. Nearly blinded at times, and buffeted by heavy winds, the helicopters slowed to half their usual speed. Twice, they were nearly forced to land. By the time they reached the target zone on the Congolese border, hours behind schedule, rain from the monsoon clouds had been cascading down for most of the final leg of the flight.
The next part of the plan was almost as bad. They set the helicopters down in the middle of the morning, five kilometers from the expedition’s campsite. The plan called for two of Reid’s team to dress as hikers and walk into the camp, to reconnoiter the area. They managed to land without incident, but the two “hikers” lost the trail in the driving rain and uncharted wilderness. The rain turned the ground into a swamp of oozing mud, which clung to the men’s boots and reduced their progress to a crawl. Eventually, in the mid-afternoon, even further behind their timetable, the two men arrived at what was left of the expedition’s camp.
Their report, over the walkie-talkies, turned things from bad to very bad. They described the carnage at the campsite, with piles of bodies scattered around the camp, now sodden with blood and water, and partially burned tents. Someone else had arrived before them. It was a fucking disaster.
He ordered all three helicopters to the expedition’s camp as soon as he received the report. Barely restraining his fury, he directed a dozen men to scour the camp for survivors and evidence of what had happened. While that search progressed, he instructed Rogers and Wilson to comb through what remained of a pile of logbooks, notes, and laptops that they found in the center of the camp.
He told the men to look for a file of documents, mostly in German. Kerrington hadn’t told him much more — just that there was a file of old Nazi documents that had to be recovered.
Someone had tried to burn the files and computers that were piled next to the fire pit. They reeked of gasoline and most of the folders were partially burned. But the torrential monsoon rains had prevented further damage. On his instructions, Rogers and Wilson went through the materials that remained with a fine-tooth comb. They inspected each of the dozens of logbooks, paging through daily reports of field research and routine lists of samples, looking for out-of-place materials or files in German.
When they were finished, they turned to the laptops. Most of the computers couldn’t be accessed and these were set carefully aside. Those that could still be operated were booted up and became the subject of intense scrutiny. Wilson, with the help of an IT specialist, methodically worked his way through the files and emails on all of the computers that still functioned.
Reid directed the men who had searched the camp to report to him. He listened impassively, asking occasional questions. He was a tall, powerfully built man, in his late fifties with grey hair, clipped close, and a military bearing. He had served in the Green Berets during the 1980s but left after ten years for something with more action. As far as he was concerned, operations like Panama and Grenada were for beginners. He wanted real combat.
After drifting through a series of mercenary assignments in forgotten corners of Africa, he had ended up at the Agency, working for Kerrington. He hadn’t always gotten the battle-field combat that he sought, but he found something at least as good. Kerrington gave him broad freedom to go after terrorists, drug lords, and similar targets. It was clear that if something went wrong, the Agency would cut him off, denying that it had ever heard of him. But Kerrington made sure that he had all the resources, and protection from oversight, that he needed to get his job done.
He returned the trust with lethal results. First, it was ex-Soviet scientists gone rogue with weapons plans and nuclear material. Next came drug barons and their financiers, which took him from Medellin and Caracas to Geneva. Operations in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria ended badly for a variety of Al Qaeda terrorists and their supporters. More recently, it had been Iranian nuclear weapons designers and North Korean hackers.
He loved his work at the CIA. He couldn’t imagine anything better than roaming the world with a semi-automatic and the best available high-tech support. He was the ultimate mercenary, doing the difficult work for Kerrington and the Agency that nobody else could handle. He rankled under the Agency’s restrictions and occasional threats of congressional and press review, but on the whole, it was just what he had wanted to do. Everywhere, he was on the front line. He planned the operations and then led them himself, still hungry for action after more than twenty years of field work.
When Kerrington proposed a new structure, twelve years ago or so, where Reid would go into the private sector, but continue to work for Kerrington with even more action and better pay, he thought for a couple days, and then accepted. The new job was even better than his old one. There was a wider pool of enemies, now including corporate spies, freelance hackers and corrupt foreign politicians. And he began to be rewarded handsomely for his work — something he came to appreciate after years of government salaries.
Sitting in one of the team’s helicopters, still parked on the valley floor, he digested the reports he had received. His mood progressively darkened throughout the afternoon, matching the dark monsoon clouds that hung low over the valley floor. The picture was at least partially clear, and completely unacceptable.
A team of professionals, almost certainly Russian Spetsnaz troops, had surprised the scientists the day before, probably in the late afternoon. From the boot prints and cartridges that littered the area, there were at least a dozen attackers. They came in two helicopters, very likely military crafts, and had used missiles and machine guns, as well as semi-automatic AK-103s, standard Spetsnaz weaponry.
The Russians had been ruthless — some forty-five locals and foreigners had been killed, many in execution-style shootings. They had also tortured one of the locals, whose ruined body Reid’s men found inside a tent in the center of the camp, stripped to the waist and soaked in blood. The attackers had also searched the camp thoroughly for something, collecting every scrap of paper, computer, and phone they could find. And they had made hurried efforts to cover their tracks.
Fortunately, the Russians left clues to the location of the wreck site. The trail of boot-prints heading up the valley was thick — nearly the entire team must have headed that direction on foot. Three hundred meters from the expedition’s camp, they found the body of one of the scientists. He had been shot in the head at close range — another execution-style killing. An effort had been made to conceal the body in the bushes by the trail, but it was half-hearted and hurried. Ten meters further up the trail, Reid’s men found a path, now marked with the boot-prints of a dozen or so men, leading up towards the ridge on one side of the valley. He ordered four of his men to follow the path and sent two of the helicopters to scour the side and top of the ridge from the air.
It took a couple of hours, but they found the wreck. It lay on the edge of the ridge, up at the top, mostly blanketed by jungle foliage. It would have been completely covered by the jungle canopy, but there had been a fire. As nearly as his men could tell, the attackers had hit the plane with machine gun fire, or possibly a rocket grenade, igniting whatever was left in its fuel tank. The fire had been fairly small, but nonetheless destroyed much of the plane.
Next to the plane, behind one of the engines, was the body of a local hunter, holding an antiquated hunting rifle, with one hand still on a nearly empty box of cartridges. The hunter’s shirt was soaked in blood, from a gaping wound in his chest. The bodies of three men were scattered in the jungle near the plane, each with a single rifle-shot wound in the head. The men were obviously military. They carried no identification, but their weapons, and one man’s tattoo, left no doubt that they were Russian. Lenin’s visage and an FSS insignia above one man’s bicep made that clear.
He finally knew enough to report. Ordinarily, he would never call Kerrington, instead waiting to be contacted. But Kerrington had said that he wanted reports as soon as new information was available. Reid made the call on his encrypted phone and grimly summarized what they had found. He barely restrained his anger at having failed to secure the plane’s cargo and at having been beaten by the Russians. He hated losing, and it hardly ever happened. Plus, he had a lot to lose on this one — the $10 million fee for the job, his very rewarding business with Kerrington and maybe more.
He saved the most important for last, hoping it would be a silver lining in the cloud. “We ID’d the bodies against the list of people on the expedition. One scientist, a student, is missing. An American woman, 28 years old. Name of Sara West. We think she’s headed west, into the jungle, with ten to fifteen Spetsnaz special forces troops hot on her tail.”
Kerrington was silent.
He continued his report. “We retrieved her laptop. The Russians missed it. She was the one who found the wreck, plus what she said was a stash of top-secret Nazi documents. She apparently took some of the files with her back to camp. At least that’s what she was going to tell a friend in an email; she never sent it, but it looks real.”
“Did she say what the papers contained?” Kerrington asked sharply.
“Nope. Just secret Nazi documents. Her email said that they were hard to believe, but nothing else.”
There was a long pause. Kerrington didn’t usually pause. Then he asked: “What about the plane? Were there any files there?”
“Nope. The Russians torched the plane by mistake during the fire fight. We found a metal file box in the wreck. It looked like it was mostly empty, apart from some charred bits of paper. There was also a garbage bag, a plastic one, that the girl seems to have filled with papers, probably from the file box. But it was almost completely burned as well. We secured the ashes for analysis, but they’re in pretty bad shape. I doubt we’ll get anything,” Reid reported.
Kerrington was silent again. Then he asked, sharply again: “Are you sure about that? Did you see what was retrieved? What papers were recovered?”
“I’m sorry, but there was nothing to recover, sir. It all burned. There’s nothing but a couple shoeboxes of ashes and melted plastic. No papers or anything else survived the fire. Not even fragments of papers. I checked the site myself while the team was going over it.”
Kerrington’s reaction to this was surprising. He didn’t seem angry. Instead, he paused once more, and after a moment directed that the ashes be sent to Langley. Immediately. Kerrington would make sure that they got analyzed.
Kerrington continued: “What about the files the girl took from the plane? Where are they?”
“We aren’t sure. Our best judgment is that the girl still has those files. Which might explain why the Russians are chasing her. If they had the files, you wouldn’t think they’d bother with her.”
There was another pause. Reid knew better than to try and fill the silence. He waited for Kerrington’s reaction. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he had feared.
“I’m not happy. This shouldn’t have happened. You have to get the girl now and retrieve whatever files she took. And if the Russians get in the way, take care of them. Don’t let them beat you again.”
“Understood, sir. We won’t.”
Kerrington hung up without saying goodbye.
Reid exhaled. It could have been worse. Much worse. In fact, Kerrington didn’t seem upset about the destruction of the files on the plane. But they still had to find the girl and whatever files she had taken. If he failed again, there would be no forgiveness. Kerrington had made very clear that failure was not an option on this mission. And he had seen what happened to others who had failed to deliver what Kerrington demanded.
When he finished his report to Kerrington, Reid held another briefing for the team down in the camp. One helicopter continued to stand guard, hovering further up the valley. His briefing was short and to the point. He was as up-beat as possible, but also made it clear that they had messed up badly and that they couldn’t fail again.
One team — with a total of eleven men — would track the girl and the Russians. The team would keep a very low profile and avoid contact with the Spetsnaz troops unless they were sure that the Russians had retrieved the files from the girl. The other team, including Reid, would leapfrog both the girl and the Russians, and set up a screen further to the west, with the aim of trapping the girl when she emerged from the jungle. This would involve posting men along the possible exit points from the rainforest — in both Uganda and the Congo, across the border. Locals would be hired to provide manpower. Even if the girl somehow eluded the Russians, she would stand out like a sore thumb — a lone white Western woman — wherever she went. This part shouldn’t be that hard.
The focus of the first team was on tracking the girl and the Russians in the jungle. He told himself that she couldn’t escape them; it was only a matter of time before a single girl, without military training and alone in the jungle would be caught. The only real issue was the Russians. They had a head start and might well get to her first. In that event, though, the prey would be the Russians. They would have no idea Reid’s men were shadowing them and would be easy prey if it came to that.
Reid’s briefing concluded with a simple order. The girl was not to be allowed to escape again. He passed around photos of her, which they had pulled off the internet. He also provided the men with an explanation for why they were chasing her. Most of the team wouldn’t care; orders were orders. But it was still good to have a rationale, if only to stop speculation.
Despite her innocent appearance, Reid explained that the girl was a cold-blooded traitor, who had betrayed the Agency, selling out to the Russians. Now she had betrayed the Russians as well, selling the same intelligence again to the Chinese, or someone else. The documents she had were a scientific masterstroke, which the Nazis had achieved in the dying days of the Third Reich. Nazi scientists had discovered, and the girl had stolen, the key to a whole new type of weapon, a virus that could be targeted based on genetic factors. The details were classified, but her theft was a critical national security threat. They could not fail again. The country’s security, as well as their bonuses, depended on succeeding.
He also had Wilson put together a cover story for the local authorities and press. The expedition had been attacked by a renegade band of rebels from the Congo. Cross-border incursions were rare, but the expedition had been unlucky. The rebels had been ruthless, killing everyone, and destroying what they didn't loot. There was no hint that the Russians or anyone else had been there.
The sun was setting as his team headed up the ridge again. The men were fit and highly trained, but the jungle paths were steep and treacherous, slick with mud, shrouded in the half-light of the rain forest, beneath the jungle canopy. The monsoon rains returned intermittently throughout the evening, drenching the men, as well as their packs, which were already weighed down by the array of equipment that twenty-first-century soldiers require. By nightfall, they were still on the ridge, barely a kilometer from the wreck, cursing the mud, the leeches, and the mosquitos.
Reid sat in the cockpit of the third helicopter. It was crossing over the Rwenzoris, into the Congo, flying low above the densely forested ridges, so they couldn't be spotted. The high peaks were to the north, and a thousand or more kilometers of rain forest stretched as far as the eye could see to the west. A vast ocean of uncharted green, with no roads or towns to break the jungle canopy. No place for an amateur, he thought to himself.
He leaned back in the seat. He still had to struggle to restrain his anger. But, despite the setbacks, the mission was back on track. Notwithstanding the fiasco, he had retained Kerrington’s confidence. And he was sure that there was no way that the girl could escape his men and their helicopters. It was just a matter of time before they caught her.
Chapter 12
Sara West
She ran. She ran up the ridge, along the same hunter’s track that she and Jackson had returned over, coming back to the camp from the Congo only weeks before. But now she wasn’t coming home — to her father and friends. Instead, she was running away, running in terror from the men who killed her father and destroyed her life. She forced those thoughts out of her mind. And ran, as fast and hard as she could.
The trail was wet — muddy and treacherous. The mud was thick, inches deep in some places, clinging to her boots, as if it wanted to hold on to her feet. Elsewhere, the trail was slippery, like an ice rink, with water-coating mossy logs and rocks. The path was especially bad on the slopes, when it climbed or descended to the streambeds that crisscrossed the ridge.
On one descent, she slipped on a moss-covered log, then slid head-first down a five-meter slope, before tumbling into the bushes that surrounded the trail, their thorny branches raking her arms. She stumbled to her feet, wiping the tears from her eyes with the backs of muddy hands, then found the trail, and ran again.
